What are the criteria for choosing Turing award winners?
The ACM A.M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association
  for Computing Machinery (ACM) to "an individual selected for
  contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community".
  It is stipulated that the contributions "should be of lasting and
  major technical importance to the computer field". The Turing Award is
  generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science
  and the "Nobel Prize of computing".